JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

As Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Suzette Mar­tin as­sures the pub­lic that in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to for­mer State of Emer­gency (SoE) de­tainees will con­tin­ue, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says stronger col­lab­o­ra­tion among in­tel­li­gence agen­cies is need­ed to se­cure con­vic­tions and im­prove pub­lic safe­ty.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Mar­tin said the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) made the nec­es­sary op­er­a­tional prepa­ra­tions to man­age the re­lease of 564 de­tainees as the State of Emer­gency comes to an end on Sep­tem­ber 17, while main­tain­ing pub­lic safe­ty.

“Our di­vi­sions, in­tel­li­gence, in­ves­tiga­tive and op­er­a­tional units re­main co­or­di­nat­ed, and our polic­ing pos­ture con­tin­ues to be guid­ed by in­tel­li­gence, ev­i­dence and the law,” Mar­tin stat­ed.

Re­spond­ing to the de­vel­op­ment, Grif­fith said re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for pub­lic safe­ty can­not rest sole­ly with the po­lice. He ar­gued that weak­ness­es in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, leg­is­la­tion and in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing have con­tributed to the sit­u­a­tion.

“This is big­ger than the po­lice. It has to do with flaws in our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, short­com­ings in our laws and ma­jor de­fi­cien­cies in in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing. The po­lice ser­vice is be­ing blamed as if it is the cause of this. If the laws make it dif­fi­cult to ar­rest peo­ple for gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty, you can­not blame the po­lice.”

Grif­fith added that while the TTPS is do­ing all it can, there is a need for a stronger in­tel­li­gence frame­work ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing ev­i­dence that can with­stand court scruti­ny rather than re­ly­ing on Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs).

While Grif­fith ex­pressed sup­port for the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, rel­a­tives of some re­leased de­tainees voiced frus­tra­tion over their de­ten­tion.

One woman, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, spoke with Guardian Me­dia out­side the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison af­ter her son’s re­lease. She said he was de­tained in March, two weeks af­ter his girl­friend, then sev­en months preg­nant, lost their daugh­ter due to com­pli­ca­tions from pre-eclamp­sia. Dur­ing his six months in cus­tody, he cel­e­brat­ed his 21st birth­day and con­tract­ed chick­en­pox.

Af­ter his re­lease, the young man was seen blow­ing kiss­es to his one-year-old child from a dis­tance, un­able to hold the tod­dler be­cause of his ill­ness. Cov­ered in calamine lo­tion, he wore gloves and a pro­tec­tive gown. His moth­er said her son had nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly had trou­ble with the law and urged rel­a­tives of oth­er de­tainees to speak out about what she viewed as the in­jus­tice of the SoE.

“There are peo­ple who are re­al­ly do­ing their thing out here. But again, it has peo­ple who are re­al­ly in­no­cent and a lot, I be­lieve more than 65 per cent of the peo­ple held dur­ing this SoE was bullsh**t. Ex­cuse my lan­guage.”

Mean­while, rel­a­tives await­ing the re­lease of de­tainees from the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) left dis­ap­point­ed af­ter an ad­min­is­tra­tive mix-up de­layed the process. Fam­i­ly mem­bers who ar­rived as ear­ly as 5 am were in­formed around 3 pm that they would have to re­turn on Tues­day to col­lect their rel­a­tives. A to­tal of 100 de­tainees were sched­uled for re­lease yes­ter­day, in­clud­ing 52 from the ECRC and eight from the Youth Train­ing and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre.